Tag: Purpose

I’m Sincerely Yours

Have you ever been in a situation where someone else has mistaken your identity? For example:
“Nice to see you again.”
“Excuse me, who are you?”
“Don’t you remember? We met at Tom and Amelia’s house a few months ago.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know them. You must be mixing me up with somebody else.”
It’s somewhat awkward if you are mistaken for someone else, but it’s a much more serious matter if you mistake your own identity, if you don’t know really who and what you are.
The mores of modern society tend to confuse the best of us, especially those that put such an emphasis on self-fulfillment. An old, popular song sums up this point of view: “Whether I’m right, or whether I’m wrong, I gotta be me, I gotta be me.”
But, am I the be-all and the end-all of my existence? Is all that really matters me? Is my life just for me?
In a few short and beautiful words, St. Paul wrote to the Romans about their fundamental identity: “None of us lives for oneself, and no one dies for oneself. For if we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the Lord; so then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.”
If we really know ourselves, we know that we are creatures, yearning to fulfill the designs of our creator. For St. Augustine, this realization was the turning point of his life. In the beginning of his autobiography, he cries to the Lord, “Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they rest in Thee.”
Our challenge, then, is to be who we really are and are meant to be. Shakespeare expressed it well in Hamlet, “This above all: to thine own self be true…” St. John the Evangelist spelt out the implications of it, “. . . we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed.”

Notice St. John says “we”. We are the Lord’s. We are his sons and daughters, and so brother and sisters — one family.
Larger families — clans, ethnic groups, and nations — also need to know who they truly are. They, too, can suffer from mistaken identity. Sometimes others mistake their identity and worth, and sometimes they mistake their identity themselves. They, too, may live confused, with a similar song, “Whether we’re right, or whether we’re wrong, we gotta be us.”
But, each of them is the Lord’s and a part of his entire human family.
It’s painful to see people who speak as though they know who they really are, who talk of God, and yet who are contradicted by their actions. Jesus named such people “hypocrites,” describing them with Isaiah’s words, “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.”
It is even more painful to witness families, clans, ethnic groups, and nations who claim to know who they are, who invoke God, and yet whose actions speak the opposite.
Paradoxically, in that region of the world where God uniquely intervened in human history, where Judaism, Christianity, and Islam began, this hypocrisy is blatant.
How profoundly and evilly mistaken are those who randomly kill innocents in the name of God, sacrifice others for their own interests and advancement, and clothe themselves with righteousness as they violate the rights of their neighbors.
How dangerous are they who do not know who and what they are.
Thanks to you, Lord, I know who I am. In you “we live and move and have our being.” I’m sincerely yours.


(Published as
“Sincerely Yours” in
one, 35:1, January 2009)

. . . on the Orient Express

One of Agatha Christie’s famous detective stories, later made into a popular motion picture, is Murder on the Orient Express.
In the heyday of train travel, the Orient Express was a special, luxurious train that ran from Europe all across Asia to the Far East.
The first part of its name, “Orient,” comes from the Latin word for “rising,” referring to the sun. The train was eastbound, heading toward the rising sun.
“Express,” of course, means that the train was traveling at high speed and making very few stops en route.
The detective story was about a crime committed on the train during the journey and the search to find out who was responsible. While the train sped through the night, a deadly drama was being played out, its players almost oblivious to the fact that everything was taking place on a moving train.
The drama of each of our lives is also being played out on an orient express.
We’re prone to be so absorbed by the cares and concerns, the preoccupations and pleasures, the responsibilities and sufferings of our daily lives that we’re almost oblivious to the fact that we’re living our lives en route to a final destination.
Our train has its track. There’s a path we’re following, all set out before us — although at any given moment we can see only a limited distance ahead, along a way we’ve never traveled before.
At times we’re so caught up in trying to control our lives that we forget completely that there’s a conductor and engineer ensuring the safety of our journey and our safe arrival at its end.

In New York City, where I live, some homeless people ride the trains endlessly, without a destination. They’re not traveling anywhere. They don’t want to get off the train because they don’t have anywhere to go.
As we ride our orient express, the greatest danger of all is that we become so accustomed to life on the train that we forget we have a destination.
How strange! As the train slows down to a complete stop at the final station, some people don’t want to get off. It’s as though they think they should live on the train forever, as though the final stop were an unavoidable interruption of a never-ending journey.
When we bought our tickets, reserved our seats, and took the train in the first place, it was because we wanted to get someplace. In fact, when the ride is long and weighs heavy upon us, we start to become impatient, counting the days and hours till arrival time.
But, until it comes, we still must live out the drama of our journeying lives as best we can — but never forgetting that we’re en route.
We’re speeding through the darkness and long night of this world and this life toward the dawn.
We’re eagerly looking forward to arriving in the land of the source of light, to living in the warmth of the Risen Son.
We’re on our way home.


(Published in
CNEWA World, 28:2, March 2002)

On Purpose

Several years ago I saw a two-hour science-fiction television drama called The Questor Tapes. It was a pilot program for a series that never materialized later.
In the story, a famous scientist had disappeared, but left behind instructions for the manufacture of an android and programming tapes to activate it. His students decided to try to create the android according to his plans. Ultimately they were successful, but the last programming tape was damaged.
As a result the android, who called himself Questor, functioned as a human being, but did not know what was his purpose. The rest of the story concerned Questor’s search to discover the design of his creator.
The story can be taken as a kind of parable. Each of us is a work of creation by another — God — and the most challenging and important task of our lives is to discover his design for us, our purpose.
In our technologically advanced modern society, there is hardly anyone who has not been confronted with the challenges of programming, be it a television receiver, VCR, digital watch, or household appliance, not to mention a computer.
In other words, to make it work, you have to figure out how to operate it according to the manufacturer’s design.
It’s curious isn’t it. We take for granted that you can’t type without learning the keyboard, you can’t drive without learning to manipulate the car’s controls and the rules of the road, you can’t even set your alarm clock without checking the instructions — but when it comes to living your life, anything goes.

In the Old Testament, the wisdom books give us a vast accumulation of practical experience about how to live well. A wise man or woman was one who had discovered the great design that was built into our very natures and learned to live accordingly. Wisdom itself was considered a great gift of God.
Modern science looks for order and design, be it in DNA or in galaxies, but curiously the notion of seeking to discover design and purpose in our lives is considered old-fashioned, outdated, and outmoded.
Besides the personal challenge to discover the Creator’s purpose for our individual lives, we also are confronted with discovering his plan for the whole human race.
Does it make sense for any country or national group to seek whatever it wants for itself? Should any supranational corporation or organization choose its own goals arbitrarily? What’s the purpose of all of human society?
St. Paul gives us his answer. In the letter to the Ephesians (1:8b-10), he writes:

In all wisdom and insight, [God the Father] has made known to us the mystery of his will in accord with the favor that he set forth in [Jesus Christ] as a plan for the fullness of times, to sum up all things in Christ, in heaven and on earth.


(Published in
Catholic Near East, 25:3, May 1999)